Posts Tagged ‘bank’

Allied Irish Banks settles over ‘problematic’ Oracle software system

November 28th, 2011

Allied Irish Banks (AIB) has reached a settlement with Oracle in a €84 million case over the implementation of a software system that the bank claimed was “beset with serious technical problems”.
Details of the settlement were not disclosed.

In its court action against Oracle, AIB had alleged it had “wasted” money on the implementation of Oracle’s Flexcube retail banking software system in 2007.

It claimed that the system was so problematic that it has since returned to using its existing retail banking system.

Just 3,000 customers, out of an expected five million, had been moved onto the new platform between 2007 and March 2010, which was when AIB decided to stop working on the implementation.

AIB also rejected Oracle’s offer of an alternative product, describing it as “wholly unsuitable”.

The bank said Oracle had notified it of plans to discontinue development of the Flexcube software on IBM’s z/DB2 platform for all western banks, apart from AIB, in March 2010.

AIB said it could not accept the plan because Oracle had promised to share the costs of upgrades with other banks, which would no longer be possible.

Oracle declined to comment on the settlement.

Source:http://www.techcentral.ie/article.aspx?id=17863

Man used software glitch to beat the bank

January 5th, 2011

A bloke who discovered a software glitch in a one armed bandit machine and used it to clean up in a a western Pennsylvania casino has been arrested by the untouchables. Andre Nestor, 39, was arrested this week after he arrived at the Washington County Courthouse for jury selection.

He was charged with 650 counts of theft, criminal conspiracy, computer trespassing and other charges involving the Meadows Racetrack and Casino. The FBI claims that Nestor and two others caused a high-bet slot machine at the casino to generate false jackpots in 2009 all up Nestor is believed to have taken home about $1 million at casinos.

However Nester claims that he is being arrested for for winning on a slot machine,”. He said that the surveillance tapes will show that he pressed buttons on the machine on the casino and won. The FBI will probably claim that he discovered that certain button combinations caused the machine to react in a particular way. It will be interesting to see how the coppers prove that is illegal as he did not actually break into the machines software.

The two men accused in the Washington County case with Nestor have pleaded guilty. Kerry Laverde, 51, pleaded guilty to three counts of receiving stolen property. Patrick Loushil, 42, had previously pleaded guilty in the case and had been expected to testify against Nestor at his Pennsylvania trial.

Source:http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/21419-man-used-software-glitch-to-beat-the-bank

Harland Financial wins more software work with Pennsylvania bank

December 30th, 2010

PeoplesBank has selected Harland Financial Solutions Inc.’s Encore branch automation solution to boost sales and service at the lender.
York, Pa.-based PeoplesBank is an existing customer of other Harland Financial Solutions products. The bank has now licensed Encore Sales & Service and Encore Teller, as well as Touché Messenger and other modules related to Encore.

PeoplesBank plans to leverage the integration between the current and new solutions to bridge the gap between software used in its back office operations and the tools used by the staff that interacts directly with clients. The goal is to help staff better serve the bank’s clients and facilitate needs-based cross-selling.

Harland Financial Solutions is a wholly owned subsidiary of Decatur, Ga.-based Harland Clarke Holdings Corp., which also owns San Antonio-based Harland Clarke and Eagan, Minn.-based Scantron Corp. It supplies software and services to thousands of financial institutions of all sizes, offering its solutions in both an in-house and service bureau environment.

Source:http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/news/2010/12/30/harland-financial-wins-more-software.html

‘RBI needs to develop software to monitor banks’ functioning’

November 30th, 2010

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) needs to develop a software to monitor the banks and also interact with leading market players to keep track of the implementation of the financial regulations passed by it. These views were expressed by Amitabh Ghosh, former RBI governor, at a panel discussion organised by the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow during its annual leadership summit.
Stressing on the need to regulate the financial sector, Ghosh cautioned against the over-regulation. He said the RBI has been passing regulations which are often ignored by the banks. “There is no meaning of instructions until they are implemented and it is not possible for the RBI to monitor the banks on a day-to-day basis,” said Ghosh.

This is where a good IT system can play an important role, Ghosh opined. “The RBI should develop a software that captures all important day-to-day aspects of the bank, particularly the adverse aspects and the incumbents of the Central bank should take cognisance of the information. Only with such a monitoring system would it be possible for the RBI to control and regulate the sector,” he said.

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Ghosh also said the RBI should have a time-to-time interaction with big players of the market and see the regulations passed by it are practical. Talking about the turmoil in the microfinance sector, Ghosh said: “If people get timely and need-based credit, they do not mind paying a bit more. The loans must be given for an extended period and the time of repayment should be structured keeping in mind that such loan recovery would be less in the initial period.”

Other speakers at the event included CEOs and corporate heads. Pointing that the focus of the economic activity in the world has shifted from the west to the east, Vikas Vasal, the executive director of KPMG said India needed to devise strategies to tap the massive growth potential.

Students of other institutes including IIM Indore and Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, also participated in the summit.

Source:http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rbi-needs-to-develop-software-to-monitor-banks-functioning/717535/0

European investment bank to recruit assistance for software development and support

September 29th, 2010

Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank (EIB) is looking for assistance in the development, implementation, support and maintenance of its multiple systems and applications. The tender is divided into six different lots, each covering a distinct sector. According to the tender document issued by EIB, the bank will sign multiple framework agreements with up to five contractors for each lot. Cascade and/or parallel mechanisms will be applied to the execution of the projects. There is a 48-month completion timeframe and an estimated budget of €16.4–33.3 million for purchases for the duration of the framework agreement. For all lots, framework agreements will have an initial duration of two years with the possibility of two one-year extensions, states the document.
The first lot covers the maintenance, support and development of EIB’s off-the-shelf packages, including Wallstreet Suite from Wall Street Systems, Swift Alliance, Fiserv’s Accurate NXG and market data (mainly Reuters and Bloomberg). The bank estimates the value of the contract over four years at €4–8.8 million.

The second lot is for the maintenance, support and development of EIB’s document management system, including Livelink from Open Text Corporation, which has been rolled out across the entire bank. Livelink’s modules include content lifecycle management (CLM), Livelink Explorer and a number of EIB-specific customisations, such as interfaces to other systems at the bank. This lot is valued at €1.9–3.84 million.

The third lot is for assistance in the maintenance, support and development of the EIB’s 38 small-scale legacy applications, based on BMC Remedy from BMC Software, Sybase PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, MS Office and open source PHP-based solutions among others. The bank puts an estimate of €880,000–1.76 million on the contract over four years.

The fourth lot covers work on EIB’s strategic enterprise application integration (EAI) platform based on IBM Websphere. The platform is fully integrated with web services running on JBoss enterprise service bus (ESB). All web service communication is centralised through the EAI, which maintains a repository of all available web services. It handles transaction-oriented and batch processing and delivery between EIB’s business applications. The platform is installed at the bank’s headquarters and is not connected to the external offices. The value of the contract is estimated at €1.7–3.6 million.

Lot number five is for the maintenance, support and development of EIB’s specific in-house applications used for lending, treasury, capital markets, risk management and reference data, and administrative services. The required development work will be based mainly on Java J2EE. The contract is worth €7.2–12.6 million.

The sixth lot covers services in the field of business analysis, testing, change management and project management. EIB states that these services may be required in all functional areas of the bank. The projected value of the four-year agreement is €650,000–2.6 million.

The candidates should present a minimum of three relevant and verifiable references of assignments carried out within the last two years in the domain of the lot concerned. In terms of financials, one of the stipulations is that no client should represent more than 50 per cent of the tenderer’s turnover.

The tender documents can be drawn up in English or French and should be submitted before midnight on 25th October 2010.

Source:http://www.ibsintelligence.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15264:european-investment-bank-to-recruit-assistance-for-software-development-and-support&catid=2:news&Itemid=12

Cyber crooks out for LinkedIn members’ bank accounts

September 27th, 2010

Cisco on Monday warned that crooks have inundated LinkedIn with emails crafted to trick members of the career-oriented social networking service into downloading software that loots bank accounts.

Cisco computer security specialists said the messages at times accounted for nearly a quarter of all the spam email sent to LinkedIn members.

The email is a phony contact request and contains a booby-trapped link that, if clicked on, infects computers with malicious software known as “ZeuS.”

“ZeuS embeds itself in the victim’s Web browser and captures your personal information,” such as online banking credentials, and is widely used to criminals to pilfer commercial band accounts,” Cisco said.

The US technology firm advised people to delete such contact requests, especially if they do not know who they are from.

Source:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iO27vxXdatjePEjFMgsdfVoftJww?docId=CNG.cd0ab416a2c7901c0abb23f392c5057d.791

Royal bank of Canada deploys progress software for FX transaction management

September 9th, 2010

Progress Software Corporation , a leading software provider that enables enterprises to be operationally responsive, has announced that the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has successfully deployed the Progress(R) Apama(R) FX Aggregation solution accelerator to support its Foreign Exchange dealing operations.

The Apama FX Aggregation solution accelerator is completely customizable and has been modified for RBC to meet their specific requirements. RBC’s new system has significantly increased the efficiency in which RBC’s traders obtain the best FX prices for their clients.

RBC is the latest in a growing list of global and regional banks that has deployed Progress Software’s Apama platform. Dr. John Bates, Progress Software’s chief technology officer, senior vice president of corporate development and strategy and Apama co-founder, commented: “The early adopters of Apama products in FX were banks consolidating various trading screens on the dealing desks. More recently, we are seeing a shift to banks deploying Apama products for liquidity aggregation and Smart Order Routing as the foundation of a broader platform for their FX eCommerce operation. In addition to direct dealing, price formulation, distribution, credit limit checking, pre-trade risk controls, auto-hedging, order aggregation and flow internalization are all components of this broader eCommerce infrastructure.

“It’s exciting to see banks like RBC building out this vision, generating immediate and significant value for their clients by exploiting the power and flexibility of the Progress Apama platform.”

Source:http://www.marketwatch.com/story/royal-bank-of-canada-deploys-progress-software-for-fx-transaction-management-2010-09-09?reflink=MW_news_stmp

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